Several things happened today, while I was walking with Kira Satya today, my five month old daughter. We were walking down Euclid St. in Berkeley, towards University of California, Berkeley. In the window of the convenience store at the corner of Ridge and Euclid, there was a poster up. I decided to take a photo of it:

I thought it would have been more effective to type in ‘them’ instead of ‘him’, if the poster is implying that Christ or Buddha have reincarnated and are alive amongst us today. I wondered what the question assumed. I wondered what most people assumed the answer to be. Would Christ or Buddha reincarnate into a human? If so, would the human be a ‘him’/man/male? What if they reincarnated into a non-human being, like a blade of grass or the lamb taken away from his or her mama to be eaten by some humans who are celebrating Jesus for Easter dinner?

Then again, I am asking these questions as someone who is not a practitioner of Christianity, but have been born and raised in a culture in which Christianity is the national norm. Since I can remember, I have been bombarded with images of “Easter”, which have included chicken eggs, chocolate treats (usually via child slavery from wonderful corporations like Hershey and Nestle), and lamb dinners. It wasn’t until I encountered the scholarship of critical animal studies and critical consumption studies that I stopped accepting these traditions as non-problematic.

While walking down Cedar street, at the intersection of Shattuck Ave, I passed by the new butcher shoppe, which teaches those who can afford it, how to butcher the non-human animals. It really seems to be a trendy practice amongst ‘hip’ Easy Basy/SF people, tauted as ‘sustainable’, ‘local’ and ‘more humane’ than non-human animals raised for consumption in standard industrial agricultural space. The shoppe had this sign up:

I am intrigued by the phenomenon of eating lamb for Easter dinner as a way to celebrate Jesus. I think of how in Christianity, the image of mother Mary holding baby Jesus is very sacred for millions. I also think of how that same type of sacredness is not afforded to the lamb and mother sheep who are torn apart to celebrate Easter. I invite people to discuss this with me, as well as my perception of what I find very contradictory to the construction of a Jesus that was supposedly all-loving and wanted to teach people how to alleviate and avoid perpetuating suffering and pain.

I also thought about Kira Satya and me and how it would be ‘insane’ for her to be taken from me to be eaten in order to celebrate the life of someone’s deity who supposedly embodied love and compassion.

The same can be said for the hundreds of thousands of Easter eggs that come out of the mass exploitation of chickens, whose babies are taken away from them. It’s amazing how here in the USA, these realities are made invisible to the plethora of children (and adults) who eagerly await celebrating Easter through the consumption of Easter eggs, lamb, as well as chocolate treats sourced from child slavery in the Ivory Coast.

What would Jesus do if they saw this sign hanging in front of the Butcher Shoppe? What would Buddha do?

These are hypothetical questions, as I know they are not going to have a ‘universal’ answer, but I’d like to start the conversation.

Unlike most Black folk I know, I was not raised in a household that subscribed to any particular religious beliefs. My parents were basically agnostic, but my parents were always open to my twin and I exploring religious philosophies. Many members of my extended family are or were Jehovah’s Witnesses or Baptists. One of my aunts gave my brother and I the gift of Watchtower subscription, a magazine dedicated to Jehovah’s Witness faith, when we were children. I found the stories and lessons both entertaining and confusing. However, for me, it just didn’t feel like the right path.

I remember I was at a family event one year. I was in my early 20s. My father was talking to one of my male family members who is a Jehovah’s Witness. Somehow, they started talking about animals. “Paul” (I’m just calling my male family member that to protect his identity) told my dad his interpretation of the Bible when it came to non-human animals: “God says we have dominion over them, so that means we can eat them.” My dad just shook his head and laughed to himself that one could interpret ‘dominion’ as ‘domination’ so they didn’t have to acknowledge and/or admit that non-human animals feel and suffer. That they can lie to themselves that animal are not sentient and can used for any human desire. Suffice to say, “Paul” simply didn’t care, because that is what his Bible said, case closed.

I also have the feeling that when I tell most Black folk that I am not Christian, that my Blackness and loyalties are questioned. The other week, I received a private email from a ‘fan’ who seemed very disappointed that I did not even talk about the importance of Christianity and healing in Black communities during the Sistah Vegan conference…and she also suggested that my new social fiction novel Scars marginalized ‘regular’ Black Christian straight girls like her (since the main character is a Black lesbian). You can go here http://sistahvegan.com/2013/10/21/the-black-queer-experience-is-not-our-experience-breeze-harpers-new-social-fiction-novel/ to read the post about her reaction to Scars .

Even though I do know that blackness is not a monolith, Black folk in the USA are stereotyped to be all Christian and heteronormative. This fan’s email got me thinking about how much not being raised as Christian– or with any form of organized religion– has deeply impacted my interactions with those [Black] people who can’t fathom a type of authentic Blackness WITIHOUT it being connected to Christianity, speciesism, and heteronormativity. My practice of Zen Buddhism often confuses Black folk.

Do you have a religious faith or not? How has having a religious faith (or not) impacted your sense of animal compassion and/or vegan philosophy? Did you grow up in a household in which religion was used to justify/rationalize the eating of animals (as well as perhaps other oppressions, such as racism, white supremacy, homophobia, transphobia, patriarchy, or ableism)?

“Embodied and Critical Perspectives on Veganism by Black Women and Allies”

Date: September 14, 2013

Time: 10:00am-6:00pm PST (USA)

Location: Web Conference Using Anymeeting.com. This means the location is on the Internet, accessible by computer or telephone.

Registration $45.00

Conference Recordings: The entire conference will be recorded and downloadable 24-48 hours after the event. Those who have already paid for the LIVE conference viewing will have access to the recordings. However, if you simply want to purchase the recordings, that option is available for $25.99.However, this option will not be available until the recordings have been processed. Hence, you cannot register to download the recordings until 24-48 hours after the event.

Please note that anyone can register as an audience member to learn about the critical and embodied perspectives of women of color vegans. Anyone can register as an audience member . One need not identify as a girl/woman/womyn/trans vegan of color to participate. This is open to all.

(PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS IS A TENTATIVE SCHEDULE AND THAT IT COULD POTENTIALLY CHANGE)

10:00 AM PST

Introduction: How Veganism is a Critical Entry Point to Discuss Social, Animal, and Environmental Justice Issues for Black Women and Allies.
Speaker: TBD
Length: 10 minutes

In this introduction to kick off the conference, the speaker will introduce how the concept of veganism can shed light on critical issues effecting Black girls and women in the USA. She will explain how veganism, as both method and philosophy, is an often overlooked perspective in a USA society that has normalized the exploitation and abuse of racialized minorities such as Black females, as well as the normalization of violence against the environment and non human animals used for human edification. This talk will be an introductory segue into the scheduled talks and discussions. It should hopefully open up innovative ideas by intersecting veganism, health activism, food politics, animal compassion, and anti racism into the lives of Black women and our allies. In addition, the speaker will introduce what is means to be an “ally” in the context of the Sistah Vegan Project.

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10:15 AM PST

Keynote Talk: How Whiteness and Patriarchy Hurt Animals

Anastasia Yarbrough

Inner Activism Services

Length: 30 minutes (20 minute presentation; 10 minute Q&A)

Abstract: In the animal rights movement, racism and sexism are treated primarily as separate forces comparable to but not wholly relevant to animal protection, with the exception of leftist pockets inspired by ecofeminist animal liberation thought, the Animal Liberation Front and other direct action groups, and the emerging Critical Animal Studies. As recent as the 2013 Animal Rights Conference, the “mainstream” animal rights movement tends to treat anti-racist, anti-sexist movements as struggles of the past that inform the new frontier social justice movement that is animal rights. However, the goal of this talk is not to argue how and why this tokenizing is a problem. Instead, my focus is to spark a dialogue on how white supremacy and patriarchy directly impact the animals we’re striving to help and protect, thus giving further relevance in the animal rights movement to become more conscious of how racism and sexism operate in society. As a black woman who is also a long-time activist for animal liberation and justice, I have the unique position to see these intersections and notice that human violence towards animals is rarely ever lacking color or gender, nor is it always simple to tease apart from systemic issues like racism and sexism. Therefore, I hope that this talk can serve as a useful and engaging spark that is relevant not just to animal rights activists but also to social justice activists who are just beginning to consider animals.

Abstract: For this presentation, I will explore PETA’s marketing campaigns that use the trope of “activism”, couched in vegan and anti-animal cruelty rhetoric, to naturalize postfeminist ideas and postrace attitudes about women’s bodies. In this postfeminist space, attaining a white sexy body becomes activist work. For PETA, the ethical aims of the vegan diet (is purported to) coincide with attaining a particular type of femininity that excludes women of color. Women of color are only strategically used in their campaigns as authentic signifiers of “diversity” where the white framework remains undisturbed. PETA uses “activist” rhetoric in their ads to bolster and naturalize the postfeminist and postrace ideas inherent in their logic.

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11:25 AM PST

Presentation Title: An Embodied Perspective on Redefining Healthy in a Cultural Context and Examining the Role of Sizeism in the Black Vegan Woman Paradigm

Nicola Norman, B.S. Nutritional Science

Baltimore, MD

Length: 30 minutes

This presentation takes a look at sizeism and how it affects attitudes in the Black community and the mainstream towards Black Vegan Women. Body Mass Indexes calibrated to white norms contribute to producing stigmas and increasing challenges to women whose bodies seem to exist at the intersection of social and cultural pressures/expectations. How big our hips, buttocks, and thighs are, are constantly being put under a microscope by family, friends, community, and the bigger society that we live in. This may be affecting Black women on the fence about trying veganism for its health benefits or deter them already due to these pressurized standards. Black vegan women of all sizes are often chastised for not meeting those standards. Black female bodies are very commonly exoticized in society. I will give examples of this and look at how sizeism is many times at the crux of this. Lastly, I will offer suggestions on how to combat the challenges of sizeism within mainstream vegan rhetoric in the USA.

Abstract: The terms ‘Vegan’ and ‘Cruelty Free’ are labels that help lend integrity to commercially produced cosmetics. Yet these labels may also be used for marketing purposes, particularly in campaigns not created with black identified women as the intended target consumer. Although the internet has largely transformed access to cosmetic products labeled ‘Vegan’, there exists a degree of status and exclusivity in terms of the price point and distribution of these products, so that many black identified women remain marginalized. These products include body care, makeup and feminine hygiene items, the things we use daily and that are closer to our bodies than the clothing we wear. One option in taking a stance against cosmetic marginalization is to extract from our histories (personal, cultural and otherwise) the beauty lessons that were intended to nourish, protect and cleanse our bodies long before they could be known as ‘Vegan’.

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1:00 PM PST

Open Discussion: “Why I Relinquished the Gospel Bird and Became a Vegan”: Girls and Women of African Descent Share Their Reasons for Choosing Veganism

Length: 45 minutes

During this hour long moderated and open discussion, Black girls and women will share their reasons for choosing veganism. If you would like to participate, email sistahvegan (at) gmail (dot) com to secure your space to speak. Space is limited to about 8 storytellers. You will have about 5-7 minutes to share your journey.

During this decolonial era, Indigenous midwifery in East Los Angeles despite the several attempts to dismantle this ancestral practice along with their Indigenous plant based nutritional advice thrives as the alterNative to biomedicine. The Indigenous foodways and nutritional ways of knowing guided by these midwives is critical in restoring or decolonizing pregnancy, birthing, feeding experiences and most importantly health. In placing the decolonial present into perspective, a herstoricalfeminist narrative of early Los Angeles, midwifery, medicine, law, and the baby food industry discloses a critical dimension of the colonial matrix of power, which has neglectedly been overlooked in determining changes in diet, health, and birthing. In recovering Indigenous foodways and nutrition, underground feminist practices in the urban ethnoscape of Los Angeles restores womb and taste healing memories.

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2:30 PM PST

Presentation Title: Constructing a Resource Beyond Parenting as a Black Vegan: Discussing Geography and Theology and Their Contradictions Within

Candace M. Laughinghouse

Regent University, PhD Candidate (Theology of Animals)

Length: 30 minutes (20 minute presentation; 10 minute Q&A)

Abstract: Surprisingly, I receive more support from non-blacks when it comes to parenting as a black vegan. Within the black community, I am guaranteed heavy doses of skepticism and defensive responses if I choose to reveal that my children have never ingested a hot dog, hamburger, bacon, and chicken! But beyond parenting as a black vegan are the challenges that relate to geography, theology, and even my own appearance. The Sistah vegan movement (as I like to call it) is inspiring as I pursue a doctoral degree in theology of animals and the effects on black theology. As a parent, my job is to protect my children and teach them the road to fulfillment in life involves education, using their talents, and compassion for all sentient beings. I want to present the above topics as many black parents have a theological foundation that can be seen as contradictory to being vegan.

Abstract: Sari Leigh will give black women, practical yoga tools to help resolve stressful home situations, past racial traumas, heartbreaks and reconnecting to spirit. Participants will learn the 15 second Mind Cleanse, A Soulful Flow yoga sequence and the revolutionary power of Mantra. Kayla Bitten will address how, on a daily basis, we people of color continue to reap the oppressive consequences of a society who refuses to see us as part of the movement to a society of innovative development and solidarity. Working with young girls and women, Kayla has witnessed first hand the effects of a society whose racist and misogynistic views has stifled them; stifled them in a way that has them questioning their worth, pushing them to participate in harmful ways of nourishment both physically, emotionally, and spiritually, and their all around position as a young girls of color living in America. Advocating ways to engage in radical self love and care is an important practice that Kayla teaches these promising young girls. She achieves this through eating habits and yoga, but she also continues to realize the lack of representation in an area where engaging in such self care is considered ‘for white people only’ (or westernized to an unnoticeable position), blatantly financially unattainable, not having the access, or being taught by those who do not have an ‘all inclusive’ work ethic. Kayla will discuss how we can began to help young girls learn and unlearn ways to decolonize and resist through acts of self care such as accessibility to spaces where we can learn about vegan/vegetarianism/ healthy eating (and ultimately how to create our own spaces where these resources can be attainable) and yoga.

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Break 4:00 pm PST

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4:20 PM PST

Open Discussion: Reflections on the Sistah Vegan Anthology

Moderator: Dr. A. Breeze Harper (tenative)

Length: 35 minutes

In 2010, Lantern Books published Sistah Vegan: Black Female Vegans Speak on Food, Identity, Health and Society. It was the first book of its kind to centralize the Black female vegan experience in the USA. Regardless of racial or ethnic identity, all are invited to openly dialogue about how Sistah Vegan anthology, as well as the Sistah Vegan Blog, affected their lives. How did you end up with the book? What chapters stood out for you? Did you give the book to a friend or family? Do you teach with the book? What would you like to see in the second volume? Email sistahvegan (at) gmail (dot) com if you would like to participate. Space is limited, so please reserve your spot.

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5:00 PM PST

End of Conference Keynote Address:

Is Black Decolonization Possible in a Moral Economy of Neoliberal Whiteness? How USA Black Vegan Liberation Rhetoric Often Perpetuates Tenets of Colonial Whiteness

Dr. A. Breeze Harper

Research Fellow

Department of Human Ecology, Community and Regional Development

University of California Davis

Length: 60 minutes (45 minute presentation; 15 minute Q&A)

Abstract: For this concluding keynote, I analyze the food that a popular Black vegan guru promotes in order to ‘purify’, ‘decolonize,’ and ‘liberate’ Black Americans from legacies of colonialism and racism. First, through an Afrocentric framework, I show how this Afrocentric philosopher resists anti-black conceptualizations of Black women as “unfeminine” and “breeders.” Such a stance is empowering and a declaration of anti-racism against the mainstream USA narrative that Black women and girls are disposable and worthless. After this analysis, I use Black feminist theorizing to explore how the meanings this famous health activist places on particular vegan commodities, unconsciously reproduces heterosexist, ableist, and black middle-class ‘reformist’ conceptualizations of a ‘healthy’ Black nation. Lastly, I explore how USA Black vegan consumer activism may often be at the expense of oppressing other vulnerable communities (i.e. how certain Black liberation empowering super-foods come to us because of economic policies embedded in neoliberal whiteness). If we engage in vegan consumerism without regard for how our vegan commodities get to us (i.e. sweatshops, child slavery, displacement of indigenous communities) what does this truly mean in terms of liberation, as well at the limits of decolonization within a USA capitalist moral economy?

I continue to be mindful to a plethora of people in which mindfulness (at least how I perceive it to be) is not reciprocated. At this point, I’m trying to understand why I don’t have it in me to be ‘nasty’ and try to hurt their feelings like they have hurt mine.

Why do I actually care about the feelings of people who call me ‘racist cunt’ for doing critical race studies, or for other disgusting language used whenever I politely blog on the Sistah Vegan project?

In addition, outside of my blog space, why do I continue to believe that if someone is impolite, cruel, nasty, etc., I shouldn’t hate them or assume that their ‘bad’ behavior means they have a ‘bad’ spirit/soul? Why do I still believe and tell myself, “They aren’t really like that. Underneath all of the anger, hate, vitriol, etc., there is the capacity for mindfulness and unconditional love”?” As of this evening, I really question how I’ve been dealing with this phenomenon and wonder if I’m just too “stupid” or “naive” to realize I am accepting “abuse” and being an apologist for their behavior and rationalizing it through the logic of my Zen Buddhist practice.

This was my first time participating at the EBMC. If you’ve been following my blog series about my personal experiences with Buddhism in the bay area of California (in which I fuse with critical race and whiteness analysis of those experiences), then this comic will probably make sense to you. If you are unfamiliar with the series, you can start here:

EBMC is not ‘supportive’ in a superficial way (by superficial, I am referring to organizations that just have sentences written down that claim they are against all those “-isms” on some piece of paper in their policies section, but it’s not really enacted at a deep structural/institutional level). Literally, being anti all those ‘-isms’ is part of EBMC’s concept of mindfulness. Why? Because to blatantly ignore the reality of things like structural racism and white supremacy on the collective lives of non-white people that you’ll find at EBMC would be unmindful. I’d consider such unmindfulness a form of dysconscious violence/discursive violence (which I’ll talk about a little later). When I participate in a sangha (EBMC) that prefaces their classes or dharma talks with the direct acknowledgment that we in the USA live within a mainstream value system in which structural ableism, racism, sexism, CIS Gender privilege, heterosexism, and classism are the norm, then I know that that is home for me. When we are told that we are sitting in a building on land (USA) that was violently taken from indigenous people and built largely by enslaved Africans, I know “I have arrived.” What that does for me is encourage me to keep ing asking deeply Buddhadharma-engaged questions like: How have structural, institutional, and overt violences of/from the European racial colonial project (which includes not just racism and white supremacy, but heteronormativity, transphobia, and sexism) affected me 500 years later? How have I potentially perpetuated suffering by benefiting from particular forms of such structural violence? What does it look like to engage in the buddhadharma in a way that makes such violences fully present?

I’ve also been thinking a lot this past week about the obvious micro agressions from white [male] Buddhists I received after I posted my experience of healing, love, and comfort at the Buddhist retreat for women of African descent at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, CA on Sept 8 2012. I was basically called a “racist” because I actively chose to seek out a sangha of women of African descent who wanted to heal from the emotional and physical pains of both structural and overt forms of racism/sexism/sexual violence in the USA. It is their opinion that I am ‘racist’. This is how they have defined “racism” and/or have not read the plethora of books written that define USA “racism” and “whiteness” in a completely different way (and I do provide those links on my blog). Or perhaps they have read this canon and have drawn the conclusion that the canon of USA critical race studies does not explain “racism” the right way.

For me, I realized that actively choosing to participate in a women of African descent Buddhist retreat for the first time in my entire life was actually choosing not to accept the violence and abuse that I had been experiencing in mostly “post-racial ‘we are all human so stop talking about race'” spaces of whiteness (including work place, university, as well as certain sanghas or Buddhist events). When I speak of violence and abuse, I’m not talking about the conventional notions of such acts (such as going out and beating someone up on the street, or hurling racial epithets at them). I’m talking about dysconscious racism. I’m talking about discursive or rhetorical violence. I am going to point you to an excerpt from a blog that defines these concepts quite well. In it, the blogger says

I am using Foucault’s concepts of rhetorical violence, which see violence as a set of political, ideological, cultural, and discursive strategies employed by dominant powers. Rhetorical violence is the violence of “modes of domination,” which need not be employed “in a direct, personal way.” Violence in this context goes beyond committing physical violence to include also discursive and emotional violence. Anti-Black racism, which is violence against Black people, takes many forms – emotional, representational, discursive and physical – and it’s not a practice that’s exclusive to one particular race/ethnicity.(source: http://discoatemybaby.wordpress.com/category/racism/)

I’m talking about the repetitive emotional pain and damage done to tens of thousands of non-white people in the USA who are living and/or working in spaces of ‘post-racial whiteness’ and they have to personally deny their lived realities of racism and white supremacy because the USA racial status quo just doesn’t want to hear “alternative ways of knowing, feeling, being.” To go into a space in which it is expected that everyone has a white Euro-Anglo middle/upper class ontology/epistemology in the USA, by default, creates intense amount of pain and suffering for tens of thousands of non-white people and poor whites. And I need to make it clear that I’m not saying it is wrong for people to have a white middle/upper class Euro-Anglo background, history, epistemology…however, I do become concerned when “post-racial” whites in the USA, practicing Buddhism in white dominated sanghas, ignore that their epistemologies are racialized and believe that their way of Buddhism is universal and the best way to interpret Buddhism. What is troubling is that these standpoints are not named as “subjective” and are only one of a million ways to ‘know’ the world [of Buddhism].

Is it possible that “post-racial” white practitioners of the buddhadharma in the USA believe that because they have been practicing Buddhism, they collectively feel that they are automatically ‘above race’ or ‘above’ considering the significance of racial formation and racialization on their consciousness and their interpretations of Buddhism? Most have rationalized to me that to bring in ‘race’ is to ‘pollute’ the ‘purity’ of Zen Buddhism; to taint it with ‘ego’. Hence, to be ‘post-racial’ is ‘pure’, but to think about the significance of ‘race’, ‘racial formation’, and ‘whiteness’ and its effects on a Buddhist sangha or individual practitioners of Buddhism is ‘impure’. This is not surprising, as Joseph Cheah writes that the translation and interpretation of Buddhism for a [white] Euro-American Buddhist convert demographic took place during an era of colonialism and Orientalism in the late 19th century. This is significant because during this period, it was the ‘pure’ and ‘objective’ white male European Orientalist “experts” who took various forms of Buddhism from ‘the Orient’ and ‘sanitized’ it (through translation and interpretation of only focusing on specific ‘texts’ versus other Buddhism practices seen as ‘too esoteric’ or ‘trivial’) and made it more ‘logical’ and ‘objective’ for the Occident (the global West) (Cheah 2011). They did this through the “objective” lens of EuroAnglo centric philosophical training and ‘scientific method'(a.k.a. positivist understandings of reality through colonialist, imperialist, and white supremacist value system that denied that valid knowledge can be gained from embodied experiences of non-white, poor, and female human beings) (Cheah 2011). Even though Cheah was not looking specific at Zen Buddhism specifically, I feel strongly that his theories and analysis could help me understand more deeply, why so many “post-racial” [white] Buddhists do not wish to critically reflect on such issues or send me microagressions as their responses to my observations.

The interesting part about me being accused of practicing ‘racism’ by white , mostly male, Buddhists is that they did not even consider anything that I had to say to be valid or worth thinking about because it did not fit into their [interpretation of] Buddhism. Having lived in a racialized nation in which their epistemologies and ontologies are primarily on center stage (but they perhaps dysconscious of such privileged and/or racialized placement) as ‘pure’ and ‘unraced’, this would perhaps make sense that my ontology and epistemology were dismissed. I started thinking about how critical whiteness scholars such as Charles Gallagher and Peggy McIntosh propose that white Americans are collectively unaware of how this center stage does not reflect the reality of those who do not exist in such white middle to upper class privileged spaces of inclusion (Gallagher 2008). Similarly, Grillo and Wildman theorize that

to people of color, who are the victims of racism/white supremacy, race is a filter through which they see the world. Whites do not look at the world through this filter of racial awareness, even though they also comprise a race. This privilege to ignore their race gives whites a societal advantage distinct from any received from the existence of discriminatory racism. [Grillo and Wildman] use the term racism/white supremacy to emphasize the link between the privilege held by whites to ignore their own race and discriminatory racism. (Grillo and Wildman 1995, 565)

However, critical race scholars, Joyce E. King, Karen Sihra, and Helen M. Anderson disagree with Gallagher, McIntosh, Grillo, and Wildman’s concept of the collectivity of USA whites being “unaware” or “unconscious” of how race and whiteness operate and benefit them. Instead, they theorize that the collectivity of white racialized people in the USA engage in “violent consciousness” that operates as something called dysconscious racism. King argues that it is “not the absence of consciousness (that is, not unconsciousness) but an impaired consciousness or distorted way of thinking about race as compared to, for example, critical consciousness” (King 1991, 134). Furthermore, what is particularly interesting about King, Sihra, and Anderson’s engagement with the theory of “violent consciousness” is that they lay the groundwork for me to see how the rhetoric of Buddhism as “peaceful,” “non-violent,” and “harmlessness” operates amongst certain “post-racial white sanghas” (and individual post-racial white Buddhists) who are engaging in dysconscious racism. Buddhism is rooted in ‘anti-violence’ and ‘harmlessness.’ Of course, how one engages in a Buddhist life is subjective and up to individual interpretation–fostered by one’s racial, gender, class, national, etc., embodied experiences and investments. However, Sihra and Anderson look at the concept of ‘harmlessness’ beyond physical acts of violence and

toward an understanding of violence that also includes the harm of failing to interrogate the lenses through which we see — lenses that simultaneously make visible and obscure. This latter understanding of harm is what we refer to as violent consciousness, which we assert is a central component of the phenomena of dysconsciousness, arrogant perception, and normalization. (Sihra and Anderson 2009, 379)

I would argue that even though many “post-racial” white Buddhists (and “post-racial” white vegans I have met over the last 7 years) do not participate in the violence of overt racism, such as calling a black person the n-word or lynching them (physical act), I personally read their responses to me are acts of discursive violence and dysconscious racism. I am also wondering if it’s possible that in general, do “post-racial” sanghas of whiteness act as sites of discursive violence and dysconscious racism by the very fact that deep discourses around, and engagement with structural racism and white supremacy are just not part of their discourse of mindfulness? Is the collectivity of “post-racial” white folk who engage in dysconscious racism, an example of how the physically violent act of maintaining whiteness and racisms (i.e. lynching and segregation) from the Jim Crow era has shifted more towards the violence of discursive and covert acts/forms of normative whiteness (as well as structural racism and normative whiteness)? Is this the pivotal difference between how whiteness and racism functioned in the spaces of pre-Civil Rights era and a current Post-Civil Rights/Obama era? Maybe it is so subtle and ‘invisible’ to the “post-racial” white folk in the USA, that bringing the ‘visibility’ of race and whiteness up causes so much anger and defensiveness…. Especially in the Buddhist (and vegan) community because of the fact that so many people are practicing Buddhism and/or veganism as a way to engage in ‘harmlessness’ and become a ‘good person.’

Lastly, I think it is notable that during my entire life, I have never been accused of being a ‘racist’ when I live in, participate in, go to school at, white places/institutions. Never have I received anger from any white person when I told them that my parents consciously chose to move to an all white town to raise my twin and I (they never said, “Hey, you’re parents were racist!”), went to a white college, or declared me a “racist” for doing my work in an all white discipline. Perhaps it is not a problem if I consciously surround myself with white people (?) It also never seemed to be a problem that I participated in all white Buddhism events many times in my 8 years of practice. However, it became a problem or ‘unsettling’ if I ever hinted that I would want to consciously choose to attend a historically black college or even apply to African American studies programs for graduate work and look at the cultural aspects of veganism amongst women of African descent in the USA (I was seen a being ‘racist’ for doing a call for papers for the Sistah Vegan project that sought out ways to understand how race and gender affected black vegan females when I was doing my Masters work at Harvard University in a post-2000 era. The accusing demographic were a plethora of white ‘post-racial’ vegans. Their micro-aggressions became empirical data of ‘post-racial’ whiteness that I used to write my masters thesis and earned the Dean’s Award for). Lastly, I am reminded of how most white kids freaked out at Dartmouth College, where I attended undergrad in the 1990s, when they saw “all the black kids sitting together”, but no one freaked out that all the white frat boys or white sorority girls sat together. (Am I the only one who sees the contradictions in those responses?)

So, back to talking about safe space. I consciously chose to participate in the Buddhist retreat for women of African descent and the EBMC because I am not able to achieve ‘wellness’ in covertly violent and abusive spaces of post-racial whiteness (and these spaces are not limited to certain Buddhist spaces. These simply are ALL ‘post-racial’ spaces of whiteness in the USA that I have lived in, went to school at, etc that I need sanctuary away from).

And as usual, I want to let people know that this is MY opinion fused with my ‘over-educated self’ and training in critical theories of race, decolonial politcs, and black feminisms….and my love of the Buddhadharma’s offerings. My words are not fact. It’s just my standpoint and how I experience the world. My mind is always changing. How I felt last week was not the same way that I felt last year and I’m sure it will be very different in one month. I am open-hearted and honest about my experiences and am being very mindful about how I convey them to the best of my ability….

P.S.I think it would be really helpful for people who aren’t familiar with EBMC to actually take time to listen to this video below that explains, essentially, what it means to CONSCIOUSLY build a sangha that is anti-racist, anti-classist, anti-ableism, and supportive of LGBTQ people.

Works Cited

Cheah, Joseph. Race and Religion in American Buddhism : White Supremacy and Immigrant Adaptation. New York: Oxford University Press.

Gallagher, Charles A. “”The End of Racism” As the New Doxa.” In White Logic, White Methods: Racism and Methodology, edited by Tukufu Zuberi and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, 163-78. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2008.

Grillo, Trina, and Stephanie M Wildman. “Obscuring the Importance of Race: The Implication of Making Comparisons between Racism and Sexism (or Other -Isms).” In Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge, edited by Richard Delgado. Philadelphia: Temple University 1995.

Since posting my three part series about whiteness in Buddhism, as well as how racialization affects spiritual practice as I experience it in the Bay Area of California, I have received comments from Zen Buddhists who have determined that I am ‘racist’ or ‘practicing’ racism for having written about ‘post-racial whiteness’ within American Buddhism and/or for having participated in a Buddhist retreat of healing for women of African Descent. I think the most interesting observation from these comments is that they are almost always from ‘white’ and ‘male’ Buddhists. I receive the exact same comments and emails from white, usually male, vegans who feel strongly that I should not be applying critical race and critical whiteness analyses to the cultural phenomenon of American veganism for my doctoral studies. In the rare times that I do point out to them, “Wow, it’s 9/10 times that it is white men who tell me that I am ‘racist'”, the accusing party will ‘educate’ me that their opinion about my work/analysis has nothing to do with the social implications of being white men in which structural racism-sexism and post-empire whiteness afford their demographic the most favorable outcomes (and I am specifically talking about racial and sexual configurations of power in the USA). Instead, they tell me that it is their ‘superior’ Zen Buddhist training (or their superior training in “European philosophical logic debate,” if not Zen) that makes them “immune” to the ‘ego’ creating divisions of ‘human labels’ because of their ‘superior post-human’ minds. Um, can you say ‘micro-aggressions’? It is my belief that it is these micro-aggressions that are produced by a “we are all post-racial” whiteness ‘ego.’ It is not that I want people to automatically agree with every single thing I say. However, there is a difference between wanting to engage in a dialogue about our differences in opinion vs. just replying with micro-aggressive words. I usually get the latter, and in doing so, in a manner that conveys that even though they have not picked up one book about critical race/whiteness studies, or admit to me, “I’m not really sure what ‘racism’ or ‘whiteness’ are because I don’t have any training in this field but…” and then they decide to EDUCATE me anyway. However… As I receive these micro-aggressive comments, I am actually inspired to continue doing the dissertation work that I am doing, and other writing projects and literary activism that ‘out’ the violence of “‘we are all post-racial’ whiteness” in the USA. This is how I interpret the Buddhist precepts and how to alleviate the suffering that reality of racism and whiteness in the USA has produced. Being ‘post-racial’ about it is dishonest (and this is how I interpret the precepts about being more mindful about such dishonesty).

I am on the last revisions for my dissertation work for the academic year of 2012-2013. The quarter at UC Davis starts up at the end of September 2012.

Over the past few years, I have dedicated a lot of time to helping people from all walks of life. Some of you have expressed interest in transitioning into veganism, but don’t know how to start. Others have asked me to help them become more mindful around issues of whiteness and structural racism. And some of you have contacted me about how to achieve a vegan pregnancy and lactation period.

I truly have enjoyed helping and consulting with folk. Every time I engage in these issues with you, I learn a lot and feel like it helps me become a better teacher.

However, as much as I would love to do this for free, I have financial responsibilities. I am requesting donations to help me finish up my last academic quarter and to finally earn my doctorate degree at the end of this year. If you enjoy the work that I do and/or have benefited from anything I have done or said, I would appreciate a monetary donation towards my tuition fees. Whether it is $5 or $50, every bit will be appreciated.

Some of you have asked me why I need help with paying for school: “Aren’t you a famous and published author?” Yes, I did create the book Sistah Vegan, but like most authors, unless our books are New York Times bestsellers, we get a small amount of return on this. I only made about $666 in royalties this past year. I truly do this work because it is in my heart; becoming rich and famous was never my motivation.

As an incentive for donating, I will have a raffle for those who contribute a monetary donation. The winner will receive a signed copy of my 2013 book Scars, to be released by Eight Ball press. It is a novel that explores the life of a black teen lesbian living in rural White New England. One of the four major characters is a vegan and enjoys promoting the ideas of food justice for human laborers and non-human animals.

Deadline for school fees: September 15, 2012

Amount needed as of September 14, 2012: $1000.

How to donate: I accept Paypal donations to the email account breezeharper (at) gmail (dot) com.

Looking at and beyond neoliberal whiteness (i.e. “white bourgeois lifestyle politics”) this dissertation will articulate and show how race operates in the creation of several vegan spaces (consciousness and physical) and consumption patterns of particular vegan commodities.

First, to understand and conceptualize contemporary forms of race, let alone white bourgeois lifestyle politics, one must understand how race, racism, and whiteness operate as structures, versus individual racism. All of us in the USA live the effects of race in all spaces: from psychic spaces, to community spaces, to cyberspace (Tuana and Sullivan 2006; Yancy 2008; Zuberi and Silva 2008) This includes the ethical consumption and alternative foods movements (Alkon and Agyeman 2011; Guthman 2011; Harris 2009; Williams-Forson 2006; Nocella 2012).Though Nocella and Torres directly critique individuals (i.e. “white people”), I have chosen to focus on the system of racialized hierarchies. Such a system produces and privileges “whiteness” and white people; this dissertation seeks to reveal how such a system is experienced by particular racialized subjects in the USA who desire to create vegan spaces, as well as those racialized subjects living in spaces of coloniality. “A systems approach helps illuminate the way in which individual and institutional behavior interact across domains and over time to produce unintended consequences with clear racialized effects” (Powell 2008, 791). Powell’s analysis of structural racism helps me re-orient the question of how race operates, within spaces of veganism, from being an individual phenomenon to a structural phenomenon, revealing that no one can escape its negative consequences. I also will be using the terms normative whiteness, neoliberal whiteness, and systemic whiteness, to more broadly define the concept of white supremacy as it relates more to structures and systems and less toward individual racists. Such a positioning of white supremacy from individuals to systems and structures moves away from the traditional scholarship that understood white supremacy in terms of individually violent acts of whites towards non-whites (see Almaguer 1994; Frederickson 1981). In this dissertation, I will be using Lori Pierce’s concept of white supremacy (i.e. neoliberal whiteness and normative whiteness), which is defined as “The conscious or unconscious promotion and advancement of the beliefs, practices, values and ideals of Euroamerican White culture, especially when those cultural values are represented as normal” (Pierce in Cheah 2011, 3). The “common sense” notion that neoliberalism is the “natural” course of action to achieve equality is one of these ‘cultural values’ underlying the modern day value system of whiteness; it is the same operation of race that Bob Torres and Anthony Nocella find problematic within the value system of mainstream American vegan consumerism.

This dissertation will focus on how particular racial concepts operate within the realm of veganism. This will be achieved through analysis of the book Sacred Woman (Afua 2000), Food Empowerment Projects (FEP) Food Empowerment Brochure, and PETA’s Cruelty Free Vegan Shopping Guide. PETA, FEP, and Sacred Woman are located within the landscape of vegan food philosophies to produce “cruelty-free” and “ethical” spaces across multiple scales (consciousness, the body, the home, the community, and the globe). However, these three sites represent three different engagements with vegan commodities as the method for achieving ethical consumption, and ultimately, a more socially just planet. Such differences are not so much about food, as much as they are about the social, political, and economic relationships underlying these vegan food commodities and spaces (i.e. neoliberal whiteness, decolonial politics, dysconscious racism, ‘race-consciousness,’ and sexualized-racism). Through the lenses of critical studies of race, ethical consumption, and food politics, this dissertation will explore such underlying relationships.

This blog is a continuation of my initial observations about normative whiteness at the San Francisco Zen Center’s 50th Anniversary celebration as well as my second posting about those observations/feelings.

My skin is black, my arms are long My hair is woolly, my back is strong Strong enough to take the pain, inflicted again and again What do they call me? My name is aunt Sarah My name is aunt Sarah, aunt Sarah

My skin is yellow, my hair is long Between two worlds I do belong But my father was rich and white He forced my mother late one night And what do they call me? My name is Saffronia, my name is Saffronia

My skin is brown, my manner is tough I’ll kill the first mother I see, my life has been rough I’m awfully bitter these days, because my parents were slaves What do they call me? My name is Peaches

And in that space, with these women who were in attendance (and that includes the ones who not only registered , but those in the room in spirit such as Nina Simone and India.Arie) I could be myself. With these women, there seemed to already be an understanding of how racism, colorism, class struggle, sexism/sexual violence, whiteness are unfortunate realities in our collective lives; that we need to heal from it. For me, there was no frustration of trying to ‘prove’ that it is real. For me, there was no high blood pressure being raised to provide a list of ‘published materials’ to educate anyone about the realities of racialized-sexualized violence. And I loved the love and openness gifted to all women of African descent there. We were all of different hues, ages, sexual orientations, able-bodied status, age, socio-economic backgrounds, etc. I know that in many cases, just because it’s a ‘black’ space doesn’t mean that all women of African descent will feel at home. I acknowledge the severe issues of colorism, transphobia, homophobia, and ‘you must only be in romantic relationship with a black person’, that exists in the collective USA community of African descent. This space was truly one of healing, because I didn’t hear any of that nonsense being perpetuated. It was great that I didn’t have to ‘defend’ why my husband is a white man (you wouldn’t believe how many times I have been questioned about how my soul-mate is not a man of African descent by black people!)

This past weekend was such a different space to be in, in comparison to my experience with San Francisco Zen Center and Zen Center at Green Gulch. And I have to admit that the Dharma teachings really “click” with me when it came from the teachings through Zenju and Konda. With their personal experiences with the traumas and anger of racism, sexual violence, the desire to want to be an activist and change it, etc, the buddhadharma truly resonates with me. I believe that their method of teaching the buddhadharma is significantly shaped by the lived experience of being racialized and sexualized as “black” and “female” in the USA. It’s called what Katherine McKittrick refers to as a black female socio-spatial epistemology. See her book Demonic Groundsand she will break down how we develop our knowledge-base (epistemology) through our embodied experiences in racialized-sexualized spaces in the USA. What does the collective knowledge system of women of African descent look like, particularly since it has been produced through geographies of violence (lynching, rape, Jim Crow, racial neobliberalism, racialized uneven development)…and geographies of resistance (the space that Nina Simone’s words creates for women of African descent; the space we were participating in at Spirit Rock that helped us ‘defy’ the ridiculous notion that America is ‘post-racial’ and that having such a ‘racially exclusive’ event ‘keeps racism alive’)?

Yes, there are a lot of challenges that non-white racialized people face, even in spaces of Buddhism, when we want to have such events, or write solely about the fusion of being a practitioner of Buddhism and being a non-white racialized subject. I remember Angel Kyodo Williams had difficulty finding largely white Buddhist bookstores who would sell her book (which is about being black and practicing Zen). They saw that as a way of ‘creating divisions amongst human beings.’ In my opinion, her book is a literary space of resistance against the devastating consequences of perpetuating the myth that the only real Buddhism is one entrenched in ‘post-raciality’ : Being Black: Zen and the Art of Living with Fearlessness and Grace (Compass)

And I don’t mean to knock the other Buddhist spaces of whiteness that I have really only experienced Buddhism in. I do appreciate what I have received from them and the relationships that I have developed… but I simply don’t get the same “Click! I get it!”, that I did at the retreat. I think with the exception of a few times I have spent talking to Abbott Sojun Mel Weistman in which I “get it”, no one else in the other Buddhist spaces of whiteness has really made the Buddhadharma click with me the way Zenju Earthlyn has. As a matter of fact, it was Zenju Earthlyn’s book Seeking Enchantment that really helped me “see” what the “purpose” could be in bringing the dharma into my rage and anger from racial trauma and normative whiteness. The other people I give due credit to are Thich Nhat Hanh and Jan Willis..

A lot of women were in attendance at the retreat, which tells me that this was REALLY needed, and that women of African descent are interested in what the Buddhadarma offers (and I say this in response to a plethora of Buddhist practitioners- usually white- who make the claim that black people have no interest in what the Buddhadharma offers.) Us women of African descent craved this fellowship and healing space. I am so grateful for Zenju and Konda for bringing the Buddhadharma to us and truly understanding where so many of us were coming from (in terms of needing to heal from the anger and trauma of racial and sexual violence). And what was even more beautiful was that the event was “accessible”. They had a sliding door registration fee of $25-$55, but also, they said that no one would be turned away due to lack of funds. And if you didn’t have a car to get out there, then there were car pools. Accessibility is key, and I think about the various times I have wanted to do certain retreats and go to certain Buddhist retreats, or just stay there for a few days but it was clearly only available to wealthier people.

I know there are many “forms” to engage in Buddhism. It would seem that the forms/styles that Zenju and Konda offered seemed to “click” with many of us there, who couldn’t quite “get” how we were perpetuating the cycles of our own suffering. After spending the whole day there, I realized how ridiculous it is that I have spent so much time in largely ‘post-racial’ white dominated spaces in which I physically and emotionally exhaust myself trying to explain what “racism is”, how “whiteness operates”, and that, “No, I’m not making this sh*t up in the head.” I have been depriving myself from these types of healing space my nearly entire life. At the end of the day of that retreat, I really asked myself, “What would happen if I stopped participating in certain spaces in which I can never just be ‘me’? What would happened if I shifted and just focused on spaces like the ones today?” Maybe I should not stop participating all together, but rather really limit my time in spaces in which ‘post-racial’ whiteness is not really acknowledged as ‘problematic’ (and by this, I don’t mean all white spaces or white bodied spaces. I am speaking specifically of spaces of whiteness in which the subjects of structural racism and implications of whiteness are ignored as significant problems). Maybe I should consider stoping my engagement with all the same questions, ‘Well, I don’t understand white privilege or my whiteness. Can you please tell me? Can you please educate me?’ Because it’s obviously really just strained me; and coupled with the facts that I NEVER get paid to spend HOURS of my life each month, educating people for ‘free’, yet I’m unable to pay for my tuition to finish my doctoral program, adds more to such stress.

I invest my time into critical whiteness/race awareness education for the racial status quo, but I’m not being ‘invested in’ in terms of getting help or assistance for me to finish the very education that makes it possible for me to teach the collectivity of white folk who ask me to teach them for free. I know I should not be expecting to get rich off of what I do, but it would be nice to be able to pay basic bills, complete my education, etc. I was reminded of the concept of Dāna, yesterday, as a form of appreciation and investing into a belief system of harmlessness and the people who uphold it that I truly believe in. I believe in Zenju and Konda. And I also believe deeply that though they taught us with love and open hearts, they should not be doing this for ‘free.’ We live in an economy in which cash-money is a very necessary energy for survival. The women accepted any Dāna we could offer. This made me think about how so many of us black females are simply not ‘invested’ in, in the USA. We are usually ‘divested in’; this is how I understand how structural and institutional racisms, as well as the machinery of whiteness, operate. Too often, black women are simply expected to be [white] society’s emotional and physical mammies. Too often we give A LOT of our selves but when it is time for us to be invested in, it is usually not reciprocated in terms of monetary investment.

. And as I think about these concepts of investment vs. divestment, I have started thinking about if my participation in sanghas of ‘post-racial whiteness ‘(well, more like ‘post-racial’ middle to upper class whiteness), whether my dana over the past 5 years to these spaces, has been a ‘divestment’ or an ‘investment’ for myself (as well as women of African descent that I rarely, if ever, find in these spiritual spaces.) Tough questions I am still trying to grapple with….

… I also realized that I don’t think I responded to the San Francisco Zen Center the way I deeply and truly wanted to. I have to think about this and figure out how to articulate what I mean in the near future, but I realized that when I met with Abbott Stucky to discuss the ‘meaning’ of my blog post about the whiteness of the 50th year SFZC celebration, I didn’t really fully engage in the way I wanted to because I think to some extent, I continue to be incredibly overwhelmed and exhausted from explaining “whiteness” to white institutions (despite me ‘thinking’ it is my calling to do so… and that’s another story for another time I guess). And not only am I exhausted, but I still wrestle deeply with the fears and the repercussions of being “honest” to white organizations or institutions about “whiteness” (even if they ask me to be ‘honest’). I will have to sit on this a little more, but I do struggle through my fears, trying to be more transparent and honest. I think that such fears are something that is hard to explain to the collectivity of white males that I have interacted with throughout my life (I say ‘collectivity’ to indicate that it’s a theme I see from the majority, but it’s not necessarily all). I don’t hear the same fears from them of being punished or reprimanded for speaking the ‘truth’ about the realities of sexual and/or racial violence and injustice that is produced by the machinery of whiteness; their conscious or unconscious possessive investment in whiteness (see George Lipsitz’s The Possessive Investment in Whiteness) simply protects them from it or/and makes them oblivious to it. And it makes sense, because they collectively aren’t usually ‘victims’ of racialized-sexualized violence within the machinery whiteness (check out Steve Martinot’s book Machinery of Whiteness), so why WOULD they have such fears? My apologies if this is not coming across as articulately as I’d like it to. I ‘fail’ so often at trying to be “me”, which means being fully honest and transparent in talking to “white” collectivity (even in ‘mindful’ compassionate oriented Buddhist Sanghas) about whiteness.

Yes, let’s talk about ‘fear.’ I do have fear. I’m not going to lie. I have tremendous fear. Fear holds so many of us back, regardless of our racial or ethnic experience.

I have collective cultural memories/images of “punishment” of black racialized people being retaliated against for trying to be transparent, honest, or changing the way things are. I have images of lynching. I have images of police brutality. I have images of chain gang workers. I have the memories of friends and family telling me how they have been retaliated against for trying to reveal, expose, talk about and teach about whiteness and racism. I have images of so much… more than images… it’s deeper than that. It is somatic. I can tell myself intellectually that I should not focus on that past or on that collective history of racialized violence that occurred to ‘us’ to make sure the status quo’s possessive investment in whiteness is not ‘taken down’… but the somatic takes over and I am shut down at being FULLY ME because I feel like I need to survive….

I remember a type of fear the impeded my response at Green Gulch 3-4 years ago, after the Sunday public lecture. It was during lunch, outside. A white woman told me and a Chinese woman that she didn’t understand labels like “African American” or “Black American.” The conversation was a long time ago, but I remember I was briefly explaining that I was a new graduate student interested in African American females and vegan food studies. The white woman said with confidence, “What’s the point of referring to people that way? I mean, racism would just disappear if we’d stop referring to each other like that.” I remember I and a Chinese woman were sitting at that table and being blown away by such ignorance of how racism and whiteness operate; how it could simply be ‘erased’ if you (and by ‘you’, the white woman meant us non-white people) didn’t engage in identity politics. And this white woman wasn’t trying to be mean, she was ‘sincere’ with her ‘understanding’ of how to eradicate racism. I remember being too scared to reply to this white woman with complete honesty. The Chinese woman simply shook her head at the white woman and said, “You don’t understand.” It was all she could really say. I could feel the frustration in her response as she was shaking her head. I could feel how she wanted to say more, but simply couldn’t. I know we both wanted to, but I felt emotionally paralyzed…But now I realized what I could have said to this white woman: “My friend, there are two things you should know: ‘Forget that I am Black….and never forget that I am Black.'” That would have been a perfect answer for that situation.

Because that it much of what I learned during the retreat. Yes, I am a woman of African Descent; a black female racialized-sexualized subject…. But, how can we be mindful of what that means? How do we understand its impact on our lives but at the same time, not let it be the defining factor of our life? How do we forget that we are Black and never forget that we are Black and how do zazen and the precepts allow us to find liberation?

This is the second part of the ongoing dialogue started from my August 2012 blogged observations. This blog was about my participation in San Francisco Zen Center’s 50th anniversary celebration. Below is a video of me sharing information about a book (see picture below) to help interested parties move forward in engaging with the implications of normative whiteness within predominantly white Buddhist sanghas. I recommended this book to Abbott Stucky of the San Francisco Zen Center at the end of August 2012 and they have ordered it for the sangha. Thanks SF Zen Center for meeting with me and hearing my take on mindful engagement about the implications of whiteness in predominantly white communities/institutions.